SGS Notes: Lots of items of high interest in the ongoing LIBOR scandal...just the tip of the iceberg… see this week's major article on US Marshalls Expose Biggest Scandal in History for all the details…
Also, Bill Murphy of GATA in this week's video references connections between the JP Morgan/LIBOR scandal and silver… Keep your eyes open out there!

Silver Metal Now and a Golden Traveler's CheckDr. Jeffrey Lewis

One of the main advantages of buying silver versus more costly precious metals like gold and platinum is that silver's relative cheapness allows you to buy more metal for the money.
Furthermore, inflation is a reality that eats away at the value of all paper currencies, while boosting the value of hard currencies like silver.

Given the likelihood of ongoing paper currency devaluation and debasement, despite short term perceptual fluctuations in the basket of floating currencies, the U.S. Dollar you are holding today is more valuable in terms of its purchasing power today than it will be tomorrow or a year from now.

Putting Things Into Perspective

If you are skeptical about holding silver or need a way to determine what time frame you should be holding silver for, you can consider the following question:
Given the at least 95% loss of purchasing power in the U.S. Dollar seen since 1913, with the vast majority of that loss of value occurring over the last 40 years, what would you rather be holding one year from now: An ounce of silver or the amount of U.S. Dollars that can currently purchase an ounce of silver?

Now ask the same question over a three, five and ten year time horizon. If your answer is consistently silver, then you really should be stocking up now that its price has retraced substantially from its recently made long-term highs.

This type of analysis allows you to put things into perspective and tolerate the short-term noise as the silver market fluctuates with less anxiety.

Why Choose Silver Over Gold?

Silver is currently preferable to gold for a variety of reasons. One of the most compelling is the price to supply ratio. The current supply of investment grade silver is 1 billion ounces versus 5 billion ounces for gold, while the ratio of metal in the ground is below 20 to 1.
Furthermore, both metals are well below their inflation-adjusted highs, especially when you calculate inflation based on an older, simpler methodology. In fact, silver is even more attractive than gold from this perspective.

Another factor is that silver is actually a more strategic and necessary commodity than ever. Its growing use in electronics, health applications and solar power production assure strong industrial demand for years to come.

Traveling With Silver's Bulk in Emergencies

Some investors who like to hold precious metals as an emergency get-out-of-town card are concerned about silver's extra bulk compared to gold when traveling. Basically, a given dollar amount of silver is much heavier and bulkier than the equivalent dollar amount of gold - so silver is just not as portable as gold.

Nevertheless, silver is not really that bulky relative to its value since a bowling ball made of pure silver would be worth well over $20,000 at $30 per ounce. What else can the average person readily accumulate and store in their house with the equivalent size and value?

Still, if you really need to 'get out of dodge' in a hurry or on foot, it would admittedly be a lot easier to carry only 15 ounces of gold - until you can switch back to silver of course!

Fortunately, investment grade silver and gold share enough properties to make them easily convertible into each other in emergencies. Silver is also easier to spend in small quantities to pay for the necessities of life while traveling.

$1 off SALE ON BULLION ROUNDS !

Buffalo, Morgan, Walking Liberty, Divisible Prospector & Civil War Rounds on sale
through July 28th.No other discounts applicable during sale.

Preparing to mint the Divisible Tea Party Rounds soon.
Please let us know of your interest to purchase and what quantity.
These are a custom minting, and we want to be sure to get enough for everyone.

SGS Notes: Have had a little 'vacation' from newsletter lately, but events in the silver market and related economy/banking/financial worlds have been mushrooming… This week's newsletter is a 'catch-up' on things going on… what's happening in finance has a direct relationship in the precious metals marketplace… things are heating up on every side… and, with the CFTC gearing up to impose position limits, it won't be long until we see the coming breakout to the upside in precious metals.

A 'Lehman Moment' Will Ensure Gold and Silver Will Soar AgainMineweb

Be sure that a huge volume of money printing will soon be on the way in Europe, and in the U.S. too, and the gold speculators' long awaited stimulus to drive prices up will at last become a reality.

Nowadays it seems that every time there is inaction, or minimal stimulative action, by the Fed that gold - and silver - take a dive. It appears to be long forgotten by the markets that gold performed extremely well throughout most of its bull run without overt Fed stimulus - but then gold investors on the fringe tend to be fickle animals increasingly overtly swayed by short term pronouncements with little cognizance taken of many of the underlying changes in the marketplace that have to be extremely bullish for precious metals. Not least of these factors include declining gold output in most of the world's major gold producing nations, hugely increasing Chinese demand - and perhaps most of all the fact that the global economy and banking system is teetering on the edge of a cliff with only a slight push needed to make it plunge to who knows where.
In his latest commentary on gold, Jeff Nichols - Managing Director of American Precious Metals Advisors and Senior Economic Adviser to Rosland Capital ponders on gold's performance vis-a-vis U.S. Fed pronouncements. "Gold shed more than $50 an ounce in a blink following last Wednesday's news from the Federal Reserve that America's central bank would not, at least not now, initiate another round of quantitative easing, opting instead for more muted monetary stimulus by extending its "Operation Twist" through year-end"

As Nichols then notes, "the recent correction in gold and silver prices has some precious metals pundits already writing obituaries for these metals. Last week, gold in New York was off more than three percent, falling from a recent high near $1,627 to $1,570 - just about giving up all of this year's gains and, worse yet, down some 18 percent from its all-time high last September. Meanwhile, silver fell by more than six percent from $28.75 an ounce to $26.90 - and at week's end silver was off some 3.4 percent for the year to date and more than 45 percent from its April 2011 peak."

But, Nichols avers, "This backtracking in gold and silver does not signal a new bearish phase for precious metals prices. At worst, it calls for more patience from investors and savers holding these metals as they await the next major move up in a still very much intact bull market. More importantly, the current weakness in gold and silver prices simply gives smart investors and fearful savers more time to buy the protection and financial insurance offered by these metals."

Most long term holders of gold invest in the knowledge that over time gold has proved to be a great wealth protector. In bull markets, yes it can generate short term gains and it is the prospect of these that brings in the speculators and leads to the kind of volatility which is currently affecting the gold and silver markets. Even the out and out gold bulls who predict soaring prices do so not in the belief that gold will provide speculative gains per se, but that fiat currencies will collapse and that say a 50% increase in the gold price will be due, in effect, to a 50% corresponding fall in the purchasing power of their local currencies. Indeed the real gold bulls believe that the increase will be far greater than 50% as fiat currency purchasing power collapses totally.

So what really is the chance of this 'worst case' scenario taking place? Unpleasantly and worryingly near. A sovereign default in Europe would not be purely a local phenomenon but would have global repercussions. A Greek default for example - which ultimately looks to be inevitable - if it happens soon will likely bring down some major European banks with it. The knock-on effect across the global financial system will be far worse with governments finding it increasingly difficult to find the wherewithal to meet their guarantees to major bank investors - and Greece is only a tiny economy. If much larger economies like Spain, or Italy, were to default, the impact on the global banking system would be truly horrendous.

All the European Community is really doing with its Greek bailouts is buying time in the hope that the banks will be able to make arrangements in the meantime to mitigate the impact of the pending default.

And the American investor can't just sit back in the hope that a European meltdown won't affect the U.S. economy and its banking system. It will. The global banking system is completely interconnected and bank failures in Europe will trigger similar failures in the U.S. Like it or not the U.S. Fed will likely need to help out Europe by pumping money into the system to prevent the dominoes starting to fall - a possibly futile gesture in the long term. The next dose of real QE from the Fed may thus not be to prop up the U.S. economy, but the European one too - and could be the biggest injection of new money into the economy yet.

Nichols puts it succinctly: "The timing of more monetary stimulus from the Fed - and the next major upward move in gold and silver prices - depends either on the economic news here in America (with bad news raising the chances of more quantitative easing sooner rather than later) or an impending financial disaster in Europe."

However he expects a round of QE in the U.S. regardless of the European situation - perhaps as soon as August given the continuing failure of the U.S. economy to show any real growth and unemployment remaining unacceptably high.

Nichols goes on "Despite yet another round of funding for Europe's sickest economies and banks - and regardless of whatever decisions are taken at the European summit this week - the Eurozone will continue to unravel. There's just no way that citizens of the peripheral economies will continue to accept austerity, collapsing economies, rising joblessness, and deteriorating living conditions for years to come."

"Sooner or later, I expect an impending if not actual default by one or another sovereign borrower or failure of one or another major European bank (what some are calling a "Lehman" moment recalling America's 2008 banking crisis) will trigger an unprecedented flood of new money from the Fed, the European Central Bank, and other central banks in Europe and Asia - assuring that gold and silver once again shine brightly."

This is perhaps an understatement. If this degree of monetary stimulation does come about the impact on gold and silver prices would be immense, and way beyond the power of governments, compliant central banks and their banking sector allies to maintain any degree of control of what is seen as the ultimate standard against which fiat currencies are measured.

SGS Notes: We're sending out our newsletter mid-week this issue because there is so much going on right now we want you to be aware of. The JP Morgan news is HUGE… so we are featuring various articles this week about that and the implications for all of us.

There are also things happening in the Eurozone and in Greece that will affect us all dramatically. Hold on to your seats, the ride is about to get bumpy. We're looking for the end of the metals manipulation when physical silver prices detach from the ETC prices… should be soon. We saw silver spot dip below $27 this week, and, looking at the Gold/Silver ratio… it's up quite high - again. Remember: that ratio SHOULD be in the 16/1 range. Still a long way to go.

Dismal Metals Sentiment - Just What Bernanke OrderedJeff Lewis

Since the dramatic drops the silver market saw in May and September of last year, prices in the precious metals market have been suffering from an excess of negative sentiment. This adverse perception is weighing on metal prices and keeping investor demand at bay.

Furthermore, although investors have continued to buy physical silver, the overall quantity being purchased has declined significantly, resulting in reduced support for the metal's price.
Nevertheless, the supply of silver is naturally limited by the quantity existing in the Earth's crust, despite ever growing industrial applications for the metal and rising price inflation. This key combination of factors still provides a strong fundamental basis for continuing to hold silver over the long term.

Could Weak Silver Sentiment be Conveniently Manufactured by Central Bankers?
Interestingly, this depressed silver market sentiment picture seems to be the perfect political tool needed during a U.S. election year to lend much needed psychological support to an ever weakening U.S. Dollar in terms of its ability to purchase goods and services.

Keeping silver and other precious metal prices low by depressing market sentiment, and perhaps even engaging in covert market intervention, seems suspiciously convenient after such an excessive amount of liquidity has already been pumped into the U.S. monetary system by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank's highly controversial quantitative easing measures promoted by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

In addition, given the high amount of liquidity the European Central Bank needed to inject to deal with the debt troubled Eurozone countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal, the increasingly obvious end result will be higher consumer price inflation, despite ongoing denials by central bank and government officials.

More QE Measures Likely as U.S. Economy Languishes in Election Year
Bearish for the Dollar, but very bullish for hard precious metal currencies like silver, is the view among many market participants that further rounds of quantitative easing or QE measures by the Fed are still practically a given during this election year to help lend support to a stubbornly struggling U.S. economy.

Nevertheless, allowing metals to trade higher based on their strong fundamentals would severely dampen the U.S. central bankers' ability to overtly increase the money supply in a substantial way.
EU Moves Toward Ratifying ESM to Provide More Permanent Bailout Mechanism
Another related development is that the European Stability Mechanism or ESM is expected to be ratified by July of this year, provided that enough of the 17 Eurozone member states approve of the bailout system to represent ninety percent of its capital commitments.

This new EU rescue program is expected to permanently replace the existing temporary European Financial Stability Facility within the Eurozone, thereby making meta-government bailouts an ongoing feature of the Eurozone's economy.

As in the United States, a reasonable person can only expect more liquidity increasing measures will soon also follow in the EU, thereby making an even stronger case for continuing to hold and accumulate precious metals like silver.

Does Jamie Dimon's Problem Actually Reside in SILVER DERIVATIVES?

Facts are facts. Since May 7th the price of silver has been mercifully driven down below $30 and on May 10th Jamie Dimon announced a $2B derivative loss. The price of silver is continuing to be driven down which in my mind means only one thing...JPM is losing the physical silver game and having to drive the price lower to get their hands on physical at a price that would reduce their overall losses. Never mind that the paper silver short will increase...this is now a physical game.
A clue lies in the COMEX data that shows that silver is in backwardization!